


Day 18: Whirl

by GemmaRose



Series: Lost Light Fest 2018 [18]
Category: The Transformers (IDW Generation One)
Genre: Drama, Family, M/M, Parenthood, Transformer Sparklings
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-18
Updated: 2018-10-19
Packaged: 2019-08-14 06:23:40
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,824
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16487471
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/GemmaRose/pseuds/GemmaRose
Summary: Two conjunxes, a brilliant ward, and now a perfect healthy little sparkling? It's too good to be true.





	1. Chapter 1

“Is it supposed to do that?” Whirl asked, craning his neck to get a better look at the wobbly, shifting mass of soft metal that had swallowed up his newspark, his _sparkling_.

“Absolutely.” Anode replied with a too-bright smile, hands kneading at the sentio like a femme possessed. “It’s completely-” she grunted, gripping and pulling the metal. “Completely normal.”

“It doesn’t seem normal.” Cyclonus rumbled from behind his shoulder. Whirl waved a claw at him distractedly, optic fixed on Anode at work.

“It is when the sparkling-” she paused again to press hard on the metal, leaning what looked like her whole weight on it and making Whirl’s spark stutter in its rapid spin. “ _Primus_ she’s a stubborn one!” Anode pressed on the metal again, this time from another angle, and despite Cyclonus and Tailgate’s hands resting on his plating and the comforting twining of their fields in the edge of his he remained tense as a bridge cable. Anode wore a look of grim determination on her face, blue optics laser-focused on the unstable form of his sparkling.

Housing the newspark had gone well, and the etching had been perfect in a way he hadn’t thought possible of something that came out of him. He should’ve known it was too good to be true. Junior, Tailgate and Whirl, the newspark... the universe was well overdue to throw something truly _awful_ at him.

“Whirl, get your aft over here!” Anode snapped, and he jolted in place.

“He’s not-”

“Now!” she demanded, cutting off Cyclonus. “Your spark can still stabilise hers!” her optics met his single one and Whirl was on his pedes in an instant, shrugging off Cyclonus’s hand and straiding right over to the lowered mediberth Anode was using as a forging table.

“What do you want me to do?” he asked, and Anode ex-vented a hiss through her clenched teeth.

“Calm her.” she ordered, and Whirl knelt to reach out and run his field against his sparkling. It was like the EM version of Junior’s screeches when she was small, and he made soft shushing noises as he sent pulses of love and affection out to the lump of metal and photonic crystal that was beginning to take form under Anode’s hands. He hoped that his sparkling wouldn’t inherit his empurata, but not very hard. He’d carried her after all, she was more him than Tailgate or Cyclonus. Odds were he’d have to ask Aid to fix this bitlet too.

“I think- she’s done.” Anode cycled her ventilations deep and rapid enough her whole chassis shook, but despite that her hands were steady as they smoothed over protometal. A single dark optic stared up at him, dominating the center of her helm, and he restarted his own ventilations he hadn’t realised were stalled.

“C’mere.” he murmured, gathering his sparkling into his arms. Tailgate was at his side, supporting him as he rose to his feet and walking him back to the mediberth he’d been sat on earlier like a tiny little guard. It took more effort than it should’ve to just sit down on the berth instead of letting his servos give out and dump his aft on the metal, but he made sure to move carefully for the sake of the fresh-forged femme cradled against his chassis. Her field pulsed with contentment and the simple type of joy he’d only ever felt from sparklings, and he returned a pulse of love and protectiveness, a wordless promise that he’d protect her with his very life if need be.

“She’s beautiful.” Tailgate whispered, reaching out to stroke the side of her helm. She wriggled in Whirl’s arms, leaning after her smaller sire’s hand when it pulled away, and Cyclonus’s hand returned to Whirl’s shoulder. He said nothing, but his field practically glowed with pride and joy.

“That took a while.” Velocity said as she came back into the room, Anode apparently having commed her.

“She was a stubborn one.” the little green plane shrugged.

“Well, I hope she’s not as stubborn about getting her first scan.” Velocity held up a handheld scanner, and Whirl was sure he would’ve gotten violent with her for trying to get so close to his sparkling if not for Tailgate and Cyclonus right there. He grudgingly loosened his hold, letting Velocity get a good clean scan, and then she quickly stepped away to get the data running through the Lost Light’s medical computer.

“Have you decided on a name?” Cyclonus asked, and Whirl gently stroked a claw along the side of his sparkling’s helm.

“Not yet.” he admitted, and his ventilations caught as her optic powered on. Most sparklings he’d seen so far had pale blue optics their first few meta-cycles, but this little femme was obviously going to be a special one.

“Aww, she’s got your optics!” Tailgate cooed. “Well, optic.”

“She does, doesn’t she?” Whirl squinted his optic shutters happily.

“Did I miss it?!” a familiar voice yelled as the door to the medbay slammed open and Junior came skidding in, still dripping and smelling faintly of solvent.

“Yes.” Cyclonus said flatly, and Whirl couldn’t help but chuckle at the crestfallen look that crossed his first ward’s face.

“It wasn’t that interesting.” he said to soothe her, shifting his fresh-forged sparkling to one arm and lifting the other to beckon Junior closer. “C’mere, Sparky. Wanna see her?”

She nodded quickly, and Tailgate’s field warmed with happiness against Whirl’s own.

“What’s her name?” Junior asked, helm tilted slightly as she looked down at her new baby sister.

“Haven’t picked one yet.” Whirl admitted. “I’m waiting on the results to see if she’s a grounder or not.”

“Fair.” Junior nodded, and Tailgate huffed indignantly but Cyclonus just nodded his agreement.

“See her?” he said softly to the sparkling tucked up against his chassis, tilting his arm so his sparkling had a better view. “That’s your sister, Junior.”

“We’re gonna be best friends.” Junior whispered almost reverently, and reached out to stroke the sparkling’s cheek.

There was a loud **THUNK** , and for a nano-klik Whirl thought his sensors had glitched. He couldn’t feel her anymore, not with his field and not against his plating. His sparkling, all of five kliks old, was gone. He thought he heard someone scream, but everything felt so distant... 

The last coherent thought to cross his processor before emotional overload sent him crashing offline was that the universe really _had_ been waiting to give him the cruelest, most awful punishment.


	2. Chapter 2

“Whirl?” a hand on his plating, small and warm. A field pressed against his own, familiar as the cycle of his vents, tense with _worry guilt apology_.

“Let him rest.” another voice said, low and familiar, and the hand lifted from his plating. Whirl’s systems shot back to fully online, optic flicking all over as he registered the scene. He was propped up in a mediberth, Junior and Tailgate sitting on his legs with Cyclonus standing next to the berth. His spark chamber felt cold and empty, his newspark gone, and his sparkling-

“Where is she?” his vocaliser clicked, straining to push emotion past the limitations of what the Functionists had deemed acceptable for a mech like him. Junior opened her mouth, then shut it again when Cyclonus placed a hand atop her helm. “Where is she?!” he tried to lunge at Cyclonus, lashing out to grab, or maybe to hurt, but it didn’t matter because when he leaned forward Junior plastered herself against his chassis, helm butting up against the underside of his cockpit and field still prickling against his own, begging for comfort.

“You bluescreened.” Cyclonus said, infuriatingly calm, and Whirl vibrated but he couldn’t very well throw Junior off to punch the Tetrahexian slag heap in the face.

“Where. Is. My. Sparkling.” he growled, vocaliser glitching and crackling under the strain.

“Two nano-kliks after, Bluescreen commed Junior.” Cyclonus continued, as though Whirl wasn’t two microns from bursting into lethal violence. “He said that something set off, what was it?”

“The paradox enforcer.” Junior supplied, field tilting apologetic. “It was supposed to stop us from getting any duplicates from other ‘verses. It reads their universe signature and puts them back at the nearest point in that universe where they, well, aren’t.”

“In the case of your sparkling,” Cyclonus picked back up, resting a hand on Junior’s shoulder. “That was nearly two meta-cycles ago.”

Two meta-cycles? Whirl looked from Cyclonus, to Junior, to Tailgate, and finally to Velocity as she reset her vocaliser. “It’s true.” she said, and turned her datapad to show Whirl two diagnostic scans. “This one is a scan we took of Junior when you were first getting custody of her, and this one is the scan I just took of your sparkling.” she made one of the windows transparent with a gesture and dragged it on top of the other to show that they were perfectly identical.

Whirl looked up at Velocity, then slowly turned his optic on Junior. Junior who’d showed up without warning, who’d loved him so unreservedly from the moment they met, who he’d been willing to give his life to protect back before he’d known he still _could_ do something like that. Junior who’d always been most comfortable near to his spark, who’d been weirdly accepting when Tailgate offered to watch her as a bitlet, who’d always seemed so hyper-attuned to his field.

His vocaliser crackled into static as he tried to produce a mess of proto-glyphs at once, and Whirl crushed Junior close against his chassis. She was here, she'd _been_ here, she had always been his but now she was more than that; now she was _theirs_ , which Tailgate had evidently realised because now he was hugging her too, vocalizer emitting happy little chirps that weren't quite proto-glyphs but came pretty close. He’d been so worried about messing up his sparkling, about being the fuckup caretaker compared to his partners, but he needn’t’ve worried at all. He’d already raised her, and she’d turned out _wonderful_.

Cyclonus hovered at the edge of the berth, smiling softly and radiating calm contentment but not touching Junior at all. Whirl would've scowled if he had a face. “Oi, Fragface, get over here.” he said instead, reaching out and clacking a claw at his recalcitrant conjunx. Cyclonus scowled at him, and he clacked his claw louder. “Hug your firstforged, dipstick.”

Junior giggled against his plating, and Whirl met Cyclonus’s optics evenly until the purple idiot sighed and stepped into range of Whirl’s reach. He gleefully grabbed Cyclonus by the arm and yanked him close, making him stumble and sit down heavily on the edge of the berth to preserve at least a modicum of his dignity. It didn’t take any further encouragement for Cyclonus to wrap his arms around all three of them, field settling down into the same warm steady presence it had been before, and Whirl shuttered his optic as he relaxed into his family’s embrace.


End file.
